8/4/10

A book I can't imagine reading--The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Undead

I think I will pass on reading this one (found via Graeme's Fantasy Book Review)


In the tradition of the blockbuster sensation Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Tor is proud to offer up The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Undead. Taking the original coming of age classic, Don Borchart has inflicted it with a taste of the macabre, as the world has been overrun by a Zombie epidemic that in the South has been dubbed "Zum." Where in the original text you would find Tom Sawyer duping his friends into whitewatching [sic] the fence, now in that same scene, Tom and his friends sharpen the edges of the fence to ward off Zombie approaches. Where Tom Sawyer doesn't have to fake his dealth [sic], just merely pretends to be a Zum. The murderous Injun' Joe is the first of the rising self-realized zombies, who know what they are and are even more vicious for it...


Tom Sawyer doesn't need zombies. And "Injun' Joe" is a problematical enough in the original, without being a zombie.

On the other hand, Dickens could use a few vampires. Like Estella in Great Expectations--she is pretty much un-dead already.

10 comments:

  1. It might pair nicely with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim by Mark Twain and W. Bill Czolgosz.

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  2. Ok. I just looked it up, and that's another one I have NO desire to read!

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  3. I am so tired of these books. Enough already.

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  4. Zombies are the metaphor for the gradual, almost imperceptible disintegration of lifestyle. Sounds kind of like what we're going through, eh? Anyway, it was fun to write.
    Don

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. *tsk* Now leave Dickens alone. Despite the fact that I'd like to sic vampires on the whole cast of David Copperfield...

    I do think this meme has been done to death, but ...obviously people are still having fun with it... ::sigh::

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  7. WHAT?! No! I read the first part of Pride & Prejudice and Vampires, and it started off fun but got old fast. Just like this mash-up trend...

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  8. I'm not sure what the writers of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim were thinking of, either, speaking of problematic characters.

    That said, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was a fun read (once) and I liked Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters--better, in some ways because Ben H. Winters mixed in more original stuff. May skim HF & ZJ to see if W. Bill Czolgosz thought about the problematic issues. May not--not sure quite how many of these I want to read.

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  9. Hmm. I suppose Huck's dad might have been a bit of a drunk, but ... a Zombie?

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  10. (Although, the undead in Pratchett do tend to imbibe embalming fluid, so I suppose Huck's dad could have been undead.)

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